Catch That Kid!
by Atarah Derek
Summary: What happens when 3-yr-old Wilbur finds the special "stickers" Grandma Lucille has stashed away in her room? One shot with some marital fluff don't worry, none of it's inappropriate .


**Catch That Kid!**

Summary: What would happen if three-year-old Wilbur discovered the special "stickers" Grandma Lucille has stashed away in her room?

Disclaimer: Disney owns it all. Bill Joyce invented it all. I'm just borrowing it for a brief period of insanity.

It was a boring day at the Robinson house. Gaston was cleaning his meat ball cannon from the previous night's hotly contested food fight, while Carl and Lefty cleaned the rest of the dining room. Aunt Billie was making repairs to her toy train. Uncle Joe was engaged in a workout hosted by iTV.

"Lift that thumb, but don't press that button. Good. And one and two and..."

No one, not even the mail man, had come by the house for hours, and twins Spike and Dimitri had fallen asleep. Buster napped at the base of Dimitri's garden pot.

Elsewhere Tallulah was IMing her friend while Laszlo worked on a painting. Their father Fritz was napping while his wife Petunia was out driving the Harley somewhere (Petunia was into old-fashioned cars and motorcycles). Grandpa Bud was looking for his teeth, and Grandma Lucille was baking cookies in the kitchen (Bud had been helping her when he lost his teeth).

Franny and Cornelius were also busy. Franny was straightening up the frogs' concert hall, and Cornelius was working on one of his projects. Even though it was Saturday, Neil had work to do at home. At the moment he was up in the solarium, working on a complicated problem.

Enter Wilbur Robinson. The three-year-old was bored out of his mind. He'd gotten tired of playing with the toys his dad had made for him, and now, alone and unsupervised, he set out to find someone to entertain him. He tried unsuccessfully to distract Tallulah from the miniature computer, and he got paint in the face for interrupting Laszlo. Not knowing for absolute certain where Aunt Petunia just might be, Wilbur thought it best to avoid waking Uncle Fritz.

Wilbur made his way to the kitchen, but he steered into the dining room at the last minute. Grandma Lucille was scary when she baked cookies. Besides, it looked as though there was nothing to much on at the moment anyway.

When Wilbur spotted his mechanical in-house baby sitter, he became excited. A friend at last!

"Hey, Carl, let's play," he called, running up to the robot.

Carl didn't look up from scrubbing the tomato sauce stain on the table. "Not right now, little buddy. I have a lot of work to do. Last night was a full-out battle."

"Aw, c'mon!" Wilbur whined. "I'm bored!"

Carl sighed. "Let's play hide and seek," he suggested. "I'm 'It' first."

"Yeah!" Wilbur squealed.

Carl put a hand over his eyes and began counting loudly. "One...Two...Three...Four..."

Wilbur dashed out of the room giggling. When he was gone, Carl smiled. He'd give the preschooler plenty of time to hide. Meanwhile, to finish those chores...

Wilbur ran down the full length of one hallway, well aware of Carl's built-in abilities to locate hidden items and children. Wilbur would have to find a really good hiding spot. He made his way upstairs. He considered the curtains in the upstairs hallway until he remembered that was where Carl had found him last time. He passed his parents' room with hardly a second glance. He knew better than to go in there without supervision.

Presently he came to the base of the staircase leading up to the solarium. He was never allowed in there without supervision either. But Daddy was up there, and he might help Wilbur hide. So the little boy began climbing the stairs.

The last time he'd been up here, Neil had been carrying him on his shoulders. Now as Wilbur came to the top of the stairs and all those big machines came into view, he felt a little nervous.

"Daddy?"

Neil popped his head out from behind one of his inventions. Behind him stood a whiteboard covered in equations.

"Hey, sport, whatcha doing up here?"

Seeing his dad gave Wilbur the courage to dash past all those huge machines. "Carl 'n me are playin' hide 'n seek, an' I'm hidin'," he said. "Can I hide up here? Please?"

Neil had knelt so that he was eye level with his son. He smiled. "Sorry, son, but I've got a lotta work to do, and you'd be..."

Wilbur hung his head. In the way. Yeah, he knew that.

Neil searched for a way to rephrase what he was going to say. "It's just that there's a lot around here that you can get hurt on, and I don't want that. Why don't you go ask Mommy where you can hide?"

Wilbur nodded. "Okay."

Neil stood up and began to direct Wilbur back toward the stairs. "That's the spirit. And when I'm done here we'll play together, okay?"

"Okay, Daddy," Wilbur agreed.

As he made his way toward the concert hall, something else caught Wilbur's eye. The door to Grandma and Grandpa's suite was slightly ajar. Wilbur had never been in there, but he knew they had some kind of kitchen, because Grandma would sometimes bake cookies up here.

Wilbur figured Carl would be well on his way to find him by now. He needed to find a hiding place. He peeked inside the room. No one home. Wilbur considered the situation. He hadn't been expressly forbidden access to his grandparents' suite, and they wouldn't mind if he hid in there for a little while. And Carl would never think to look in there, especially if the door was closed. So Wilbur slipped into the room and quietly closed the door.

When he turned around to find an actual hiding place, he was thrilled by what he saw. There was a ginormous bed with plenty of space underneath it, a walk-in closet, an old-fashioned wardrobe, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. So many places to hide. Wilbur finally settled on the wardrobe. He climbed in and shut the door, for he was too young to realize that it is very foolish to shut oneself inside a wardrobe. He hunkered down toward the back and waited.

He waited for what felt to him like hours (though it was only five minutes or so). Finally he decided to pass the time by exploring the wardrobe. He felt around a good deal before realizing that most of the items in the wardrobe were coats. One felt a lot like his father's lab coat. But Wilbur noticed something else about it. There was something in the pocket. He reached in and pulled a wad of papers out. The only way to see what the papers were, of course, was to get out of the wardrobe and into the light. Wilbur fumbled with the door, and after nearly crying out in panic, managed to open it and climb out. He resolved to never shut the wardrobe door on himself again.

Now that he could see, he turned the papers over in his hand. To his excitement he realized that they were stickers. They must be Grandma Lucille's, because they had pictures of cups on them. The cups looked like they were full of that strange drink that Grandma liked; the one she'd called "coffee." Wilbur decided there'd be no harm in putting one of the stickers on his t-shirt. He climbed up on the bathroom counter to look at himself in the mirror. After deciding that one sticker looked lonely, Wilbur added two more to his shirt, one on each cheek, and one on his left hand. He then put both hands on his hips and grinned at himself. So handsome.

Suddenly he noticed a strange sensation that seemed to radiate from the stickers. He felt the urge to run. He had to move. With a burst of energy he was off the bathroom counter, out of the suite, and down the hall like a shot. He'd never felt so alive. He let out a cry of delight as he sped through the house.

"Yeeeeahoooooo!"

Neil was on the verge of solving his problem when he heard someone rapping on the glass dome of the solarium. He looked up to see Wilbur outside on the edge of the roof.

"Hi, Daddy!"

"Wha...Wilbur?!" Neil dropped what he was doing and scrambled for the stairs. "Don't move, Wilbur!" he yelled. "Just stay right there! Daddy's coming!"

As Neil disappeared down the stairs, heading for the nearest roof access, Wilbur giggled and continued to scramble along that precarious edge. Below him loomed ground and bushes. Neil had not yet played with the idea of artificial trampoline turf. It was a long way down for a little guy. But while on the caffeine, Wilbur didn't mind.

Neil had barely made contact with the ground floor before he was sprinting again. He burst into the dining room. "Carl, Wilbur's on the roof! I need your help!"

Carl needed no further instruction. He immediately headed outside while Neil chose a tube that would take him up to the roof.

By the time he got up there, the whole family had become aware of what was happening. All of them, including a seriously worried Franny, and excluding an elsewhere-occupied Uncle Art, stood watching as Carl and Neil tried to herd Wilbur to safety.

Neil pressed himself up against the ledge as much as he could, inching over to where Wilbur played.

"Wilbur, come to Daddy," Neil coaxed.

Carl suddenly appeared, his legs extending like stilts. "Hey, little buddy, whatcha doin' up here?"

Suddenly Wilbur remembered their game of hide and seek. "Can't catch me!" he taunted the robot, scrambling up and away.

"Wilbur, don't!" Neil yelled. But all he got in response was a giggle. He turned and began climbing after the little boy.

When he reached the flat top of the roof, he saw that Wilbur had taken the tube downstairs. He called to Carl, "He's coming down! Tell everyone to keep an eye out for him!"

Carl relayed the information to the crowd below. "And something else I noticed. He's got stickers that look a whole lot like those caffeine patches."

Franny gasped. She turned to Lucille. "How much caffeine is in one patch?"

"Twelve cups worth, if I remember," Lucille said.

"Carl, how many stickers did Wilbur have on his skin?"

"Three, from what I saw," Carl answered. "And three more on his shirt."

Franny didn't respond. She was running to meet Neil.

She caught him coming from the travel tube. "Did you get him?" Neil gasped.

"No, we didn't even see him."

From somewhere in the distance they heard a child's laughter, followed by family members' cries of alarm.

"There he is!"

"Get him!"

"Wait...where'd he go?"

Neil was still trying to catch his breath. "How can one kid with little legs move so fast?"

"Caffeine," Franny said. "He got into your mother's caffeine patches. He's wearing three of them on his face and hands."

"Oh no!"

They both turned and began running in the general direction of the shouting.

To Wilbur, this had all turned into one giant game of hide-and-seek tag. He would pop in and out of various hiding spots, each time just barely eluding one family member. Even Carl couldn't catch him. He raced through the dining room and kitchen, with Tallulah behind him in her wheeled Sketcher shoes. He then turned a corner and disappeared under some object, leaving Tallulah to race right by.

He made his way up and down off the roof numerous times, during which Carl and Laszlo tag teamed to try and catch him, but to no avail. Wilbur actually used Carl as a ladder to scramble down off the roof. He weaved in and out between Carl and Laszlo, sending Laszlo into a dizzying spin with his anti-gravity belt.

Lefty and the twins tried catching Wilbur at the door, but the little boy would slip right out of their twelve arms. At one point he actually bit Spike, a complaint that was made very loudly to Franny and Neil.

In an attempt to nab Wilbur, Gaston launched himself from his cannon as Wilbur raced across the lawn. But just as Gaston was about to grab him, Wilbur veered sharply to the right. Gaston continued on a straightaway right into some topiary.

Aunt Billie chased Wilbur in her toy train through the hallways. Eventually she lost sight of him, only to find him on the roof of the train, laughing gleefully and shouting, "Choo-choo!" By the time the train came to a halt, Wilbur had vanished.

The chase went on for hours, and as each family member became more exhausted, they prayed Wilbur was feeling the same way. But the little boy showed no sign of slowing. Grandma Lucille put out some freshly baked cookies, hoping to lure Wilbur into a trap. But one confusing blur later, the cookies were gone, and a muffled "Thanks, Gramma," drifted back like a Doppler signal.

By this point, Neil and Franny were just trying to follow Wilbur's trail. Neil was trying to make sense of Wilbur's pattern of movement, which more or less resembled a Family Circus cartoon in which one child would wander all over the house, yard, and neighborhood just to reach a goal that was a few feet away. But the math and science genius mind was at work, picking up a distinctive pattern. It looked completely random to everyone else, as each and every distraction (including the frogs' bar) would cause Wilbur to stop for a brief moment. But Neil was beginning to piece together a theory about where Wilbur would go next.

"He was in the concert hall last," Franny called over her shoulder.

"No, wait!" Neil yelled back. "He won't be there anymore. But I know where he might go next."

Franny followed her husband outside to the back yard where several trees and topiary stood. By this time, Art had come back from delivering pizza, and was engaged in aerial surveillance. He swooped over Neil and Franny, calling, "He's headed for the trees!"

Neil shouted a thanks. Just as he thought. Now, if he could just get ahead of Wilbur before Wilbur suspected him...

Neil finally spotted Wilbur scrambling up a rather tall tree. He stopped, frustrated and helpless. He was too late to stop Wilbur, and those branches would never hold his weight. "Franny!" he called. "Go get either Carl or Laszlo!"

Franny nodded and turned to find said family members. Neil watched nervously as Wilbur climbed higher.

"Wilbur, not too high! Come down, son. It's getting late."

Wilbur translated that as any three-year-old would. "No! I'm havin' fun! Don't wanna go to bed!" He reached for a particularly fragile limb.

"Wilbur, don't—"

SNAP!

Wilbur plummeted toward the ground. Neil immediately dove after him, landing hard on the ground, but catching Wilbur safely in his arms. It was then that Franny showed up with Carl, Laszlo, and the rest of the family in tow. Wilbur giggled. Suddenly he seemed to lose all energy, and collapsed on Neil's chest, fast asleep. One caffeine patch, worn out completely, fell from his cheek.

"Oh, thank goodness," Franny said.

Neil looked at his family in a daze. Relief flooded over him as he realized the ordeal was over. He flopped back down on the grass and passed out.

A house call from the doctor revealed Wilbur was no worse off for the heavy dose of caffeine he'd received, although he was expected to sleep for twelve hours straight. That news was greeted with a sigh of relief from everyone present. Lucille promised to store the caffeine patches in a locked drawer, safe from little hands.

Franny plucked the remaining patches from Wilbur's skin and shirt and threw them away. She then carried her little boy to his room and laid him down in his bed. After tucking him in and kissing him good night, she headed for her own bedroom. When she got there, she discovered her husband laying on the bed, dozing. He was still in his slacks and lab coat. Franny was surprised he'd had the presence of mind to take off his shoes. She laid down next to him, putting a hand on his chest.

"Exciting day, huh?"

"Mmm," Neil mumbled sarcastically. "What I wouldn't give for a boring day once in a while."

Franny smiled. "What fun would that be?"

Neil opened one eye to look at her like she'd lost her mind. Franny chuckled and kissed him on the cheek.

"I'm glad it's over too. And Wilbur shouldn't wake up for at least twelve hours."

"Well that's good news."

Franny laid an arm across her husband's chest. He responded by slipping his arm underneath her body and resting his hand on her waist. She snuggled closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

And in that position they drifted off to sleep, both thoroughly exhausted from a typical day of parenting.

**AN**: Well, I hope you enjoyed my fluffy little one shot, musing about the power of caffeine on a three-year-old. Don't worry, Wilbur will make a full recovery. Personal opinion: The above scene would make an adorable piece of fan art.

Somewhere in this story I've hidden a reference to my favorite author of all time. I quote his work almost directly at one point. First person to identify it gets a cookie.


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